Traditionally, the receipt of broadcast audio or video content was performed by specialized audio/video hardware, such as television tuners, cable boxes, satellite television tuners, video cassette recorders, and other like specialized audio/video hardware. More recently, however, the storage and processing capabilities of computing devices have sufficiently increased to enable the utilization of computing devices for the receipt and recording of broadcast audio or video content. Broadcast audio or video content is still broadcast through signals, either transmitted through wiring directly to the user, such as via a cable network, or transmitted over the air and received by an appropriate antenna local to the user, including, for example, satellite antennas that are utilized to receive broadcast audio or video content that is transmitted from one or more satellites. As such, broadcast audio or video content still requires one or more tuners to appropriately receive such signals, including, for example, satellite tuners and cable television tuners, including both analog and digital tuners. Traditionally, such tuners interface with a computing device through a peripheral interface by which the signals received by such tuners are converted into information that the computing device can process and store. Additionally, such turners typically comprise mechanisms by which the computing device can control the tuner, such as, for example, selecting a particular channel of the broadcast audio or video content to be tuned to by the tuner, thereby delivering the audio or video content of the selected channel to the computing device in the form of information that can be processed and stored by the computing device.
Some computing devices that comprise, or are otherwise communicationally coupled with, one or more tuners are dedicated audio/video content devices. For example, modern digital video recorders are computing devices with one or more tuners whose operating systems are optimized for an environment in which the user is typically located at some distance from a display device that is communicationally coupled to such digital video recorders and in which the user typically does not have access to anything other than a simple controller, such as, for example, a remote control device that may only comprise a few buttons. As such, the operating system of a computing device being utilized as a digital video recorder can be optimized to display simple interfaces to a user and enable the user to perform simple tasks utilizing only traditional left/right, up/down and select buttons.
Other computing devices that comprise, or are otherwise communicationally coupled with, one or more tuners may be more traditional general-purpose computing devices that merely comprise the capability for receiving, displaying and storing one or more selections of broadcast audio or video content. Such computing devices are typically utilized by the user to perform general purpose computing tasks, including content creation tasks, content tasks, such as games, and network connectivity tasks, such as utilizing electronic mail. In addition, such computing devices can, by virtue of their communicational connection to one or more tuners, additionally be utilized to receive, display and record broadcast audio or video content, such as within a designated area of the display being generated by such a computing device.
Computing devices that are communicationally coupled with one or more tuners can be utilized to receive, display and record broadcast audio or video content. Traditionally, such functionality is utilized by users to select specific programs from among the broadcast audio or video content that the user either wishes to watch, record, or a combination thereof. Modern computing devices with one or more tuners, however, do not differentiate between the multiple tuners, except during an initial setup routine. Consequently, once such multiple tuners have been properly installed in the computing device and communicationally coupled with one or more processes executing on such a computing device, there is no further verification made to determine whether any particular tuner can receive the selected program and, in cases where multiple tuners of the same type are communicationally coupled with a single computing device, there is no further determination made as to whether any one particular tuner, from among those multiple tuners of the same type, is to be utilized to receive the selected program.